A Moment of Trust
by God's Demonic Messenger
Summary: Ferrar doesn't know what he's doing on a Classified frigate but whatever it is, it's important; upper-echelons important. But when a familiar face reveals itself to his new CO, he has to contend with being an accomplice in an insane ploy to gain the rest of the crew's loyalty. But one moment of trust will put into motion an avalanche of consequences.


The under-construction hangar bay of the frigate class warship buzzed with activity. Though the building machinery sat idle and not a single construction worker could be seen, the sounds of scuffing boots against the unpainted ceristeel deck, the impacts of heavy duffel bags, and the odd harmonica or two reverberated against the unfinished walls of the ship.

There was very little idle chatter however. Despite the fact that each and every person arrayed within the hangar bay had served in the military for a minimum of four years, very few of them had ever met. The cross-branch divide had kept them from doing so.

More than that however was the unspoken agreement to remain silent in the face of uncertainty. Each and every one of the men and women situated under the loading gantry knew the importance of security protocol and in their current situation they knew that security protocol dictated silence about what they may or may not know.

Commander Ferrar sat on his bag beside Lieutenant Second Grade Spyder and their comrade "Happy" Harkins, observing the other personnel around him. On collars he could see the insignia of the Troubleshooters, Knifemen, and a few Sharpshooters. These men and women in front of him were the best of the best from across three different branches.

And then there was Spyder, Harkins, himself, and a small group of what he figured were technicians huddled over their computers casting occasional wary glances up at the combat personnel.

Ferrar knew his company was good. He knew that they'd done their fair share of hard fighting and come back relatively intact. But he couldn't help but feel slightly outclassed by the array of specialists known for pulling off the impossible day in and day out.

Which made him question whether he and the few members of his old company really belonged.

Occasionally a Sharpshooter or Knifeman would glance up at Ferrar, sizing him up. He could feel them coming to the same conclusion about him. The only thing Ferrar could do was meet their gaze and nod in silent acknowledgement.

After the large group of servicemeioa had finally settled, Ferrar began to notice more curious glances around the hangar bay. Subtle though they were, he noticed their distinctive patterns.

_Apparently,_ he thought to himself, _nobody knows why we're here. _

Ferrar's orders had arrived while he was on leave, reaching him via a direct commlink from the Branch Special Forces. They had been signed by Admiral Genibes himself, the Special Forces Command Staff member. That meant that whatever his mission was, it came from the very top. It was also classified as Top Secret, which meant any word spoken regarding their mission without the consent of whoever their CO was could be punishable by death.

So that was fun.

He was sure that the rest of the men and women in the large room had come to the same conclusion. Hence the silence.

Just as the silence become truly oppressive to Ferrar, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. As he looked toward it, he saw the distinctive face of Commander Christine Benjamin just as she pulled her head back through the doorway leading to what must be the crew quarters based on the sign posted to the left of the doorway.

Ferrar tried to hide his smirk. He leaned over to Spyder and said, "Don't react, but I'm pretty sure our new CO is none other than Bloody Mary."

Spyder's face carefully remained neutral, but he quietly whispered back, "''Choo 'ave t' be k'dding me!"

"Nope, I just saw her DoI appointed Chaplain," Ferrar replied. "Now quiet down, I have an idea."

Raising his voice to address the rest of the assembled soldiers, Ferrar asked, "So what do you guys know about the Hero of the Banquet?"

Knowing that the question itself was innocent Ferrar had a feeling people would respond. And he was right.

"I don't care how good a psi that woman is, that was a damn impressive break out," one of the Knifemen responded. "From what I hear, she took out their entire command staff while she was stark naked. Meioa-e's got some serious guts."

"Yeah. Some of the rumors I heard say she went there on purpose," another soldier piped in. "Guy I heard it from said it wasn't a break out but a rescue."

"I call bull shak on that one man," one of the Sharpshooters said. "Sounds to me like typical rumor mill exaggeration."

"I know, but she did rescue Admiral Viega, her Direct Command Staff superior," the first soldier replied. "It might just be crazy enough to be true."

Ferrar hadn't heard that interpretation. _Knowing Ia, _he thought to himself, maintaining a blank expression, _that's probably exactly what happened._

One of the Troubleshooters, a psi himself by the looks of it, piped in, "I wouldn't pay too much attention to those rumors meioa-o; there's no way that she's powerful enough to do everything they say she did.

"Besides, the exact details are all classified 'Secret,'" he continued. "An old buddy of mine that made general looked into it and nearly got flogged for his efforts. In my opinion, we're better off not knowing."

Ferrar looked around the hangar and saw agreement on most of their faces.

"That's where you're wrong Commander Engles," came a new voice that effortless cut through the chatter, one which Ferrar and Spyder recognized instantly. The entire assembly turned to face the white haired woman walking calmly over to the mass of gathered personnel. She stopped right in front of a nondescript case and faced the crowd.

Ferrar, noticing the new rank insignia on Ia's collar, which proved to him that she was indeed their new CO, and shouted crisply, "Officer on deck!"

He took a small measure of comfort in the equally crisp sound of over one hundred and fifty combat boots stamping onto the deck in near unison.

Ignoring the brief, but quiet, outburst of surprise, she looked toward Ferrar from the edge of the group and nodded, a small smirk touching her lips before disappearing. "At ease," she said easily.

Ferrar relaxed into parade rest and met Ia's gaze.

Facing the slightly confused looks of the crowd she spoke, "Many of you may be wondering why you're here. Why a member of the Command Staff personally signed your transfer orders. Why you're on a ship that's not even complete and surrounded by soldiers you've never served with. Why my capabilities are so well guarded that a General of the Special Forces can't access them."

She paused to let Commander Engles recover his composure and the people around him refocus their attention before she continued, "On this ship, there is only truth. On this ship, my capabilities are not a closely guarded military secret. And each and every one of you needs to trust in those capabilities completely, just as I already trust in each of yours."

Cmd. Engles interrupted her. It was subtle, and only someone who was looking for strange pauses would notice, but Ferrar could tell she stopped for him, "Permission to speak freely sir?"

Ia gestured with her hand for him to continue.

"How can you know what we're capable of?" he asked. "You've never served with any of us so how can you already trust in our capabilities 'completely?' Even if you are a precog, no one is that powerful."

"Engles, you've been officially ranked as a Rank 7 Xenopath so I know you'll understand what I'm about to tell you," Ia replied, "My precognitive ability is ranked equal or greater to a Rank 84. The testing equipment we were using couldn't handle anything higher."

Most of the psis in the room were too well trained to let their surprise show audibly, but Ferrar could see more than a few skeptical faces. Engles, obligingly, made the obvious comment.

"That's… impossible. Sir."

Ia replied with a wry smirk. "Major Ferrar," she said as she drew her p-gun. That act alone was enough to unsettle most of the personnel arrayed around her. When she carefully checked to ensure the gun was loaded and cocked, she continued, "Come take my p-gun and stand over there." She pointed to a spot just past the main group of soldiers.

Ferrar had absolutely no idea what Ia had planned but he had a distinctly uneasy feeling about the implications of receiving a loaded and cocked weapon from her. Considering she had literally surfed the crest of a floodwave and singlehandedly eliminated the leaders of the Lyebariko with nothing but a sword while serving in his company, two of several patently insane actions, he could only conclude that whatever it was she had planned wasn't going to be a friendly marksmanship contest.

However, as his commanding officer, he had to comply with her orders. Up to a point. He walked over to her and took her weapon and the offered second clip silently, but managed to shoot her a look that was half question and half warning. She simply stared back, completely unfazed.

He definitely had a bad feeling about this.

The crowd of soldiers shifted uneasily as he moved to the spot she'd told him to. Ia broke the wary silence and said, "Everyone go stand behind Ferrar in a semicircle facing me. If you can't see me, move until you can." She didn't move from her spot in front of him. While most of the crew was moving to follow her order, Ferrar noticed something between the passage of bodies. One moment she stood empty handed, arms at her side and the next she wielded her special precognition-episode-inducing sword.

Ferrar was a smart man. He could piece two things together fairly quickly and he prided himself on his ability to see the truth of situations most others couldn't. To the best of his knowledge, he was the only person in the entire Space Force to have discovered that Ia had precognitive powers before she herself revealed them. He also had more personal experience with Ia's special abilities than most of the other service personnel arrayed around him.

As a result he felt a deep knot form in the pit of his stomach. He wielded a weapon and she her sword and there was only one thing that he could figure that meant in a situation like this. He ignored the entrance of a wary looking Christine Benjamin, focusing completely on the woman across from him.

"Ia…" He murmured meaningfully, just loud enough to cross the distance over the sound of milling bodies. This was a bad idea and he'd be damned if he was going to be the one to follow some foolhardy plan to prove her point.

"Major; shoot me," she said, a small smirk curling her lips up in understanding.

Ferrar closed his eyes briefly, wishing to himself that he weren't so quick to grasp things. Sometimes he just hated being right. Sometimes he'd give up almost anything just to be wrong.

A major commotion followed Ia's order. Two voices stood out to him; Cmd. Engles' and Cmd. Benjamin's.

"Ia are you out of your mind?! What the hell do you hope to gain—,"

"Ferrar you can't possibly be considering doing what she says! She's out of her_ shakking _mind—,"

"Ia, rescind that order! It's suicide! Why in the world would you—,"

"Ferrar you know just as well as I do that the Fatality Five won't protect you if you kill your CO! Don't—,"

The truth was that Ferrar barely heard any of it. He knew what none of the other people around him did; that she could in fact stop a bullet with her sword. He knew it because he'd done it himself in that brief moment in the Zubeneschamali System when he'd held her sword.

He knew she was a precog that was accurate enough to pull off miracles. He'd heard the rumors about her psychic abilities in the Battle of the Banquet. Combining the two ensured he had every reason to believe she could stop a bullet with a sword.

Which in no way diminished the significance of firing a live weapon directly at a superior officer. If he was wrong, if she was overconfident, if something, anything, went wrong he'd lose his career and the Space Force would lose the best damned soldier it had ever seen.

What she was asking of him was a leap of faith, and she was placing her own body on the altar.

He'd seen her work; he knew she was powerful. He also knew that he didn't fully grasp her full capabilities, as evidenced by the fact that most of the rumors of her rescue on Sallha included the use of powers he had no idea she had.

Which, he realized, was the whole point. _It had to be me because no one else would dare to pull the trigger_, he thought. _But if it's a demonstration of her abilities then I need to see it only slightly less than everyone else._

Latching onto that thought, his resolve began to harden. Staring hard at Ia's frustratingly sure face, he tightened his grip on the p-gun. He tilted it to look at it then returned his gaze to Ia's face. A tiny smirk and a slightly cocked eyebrow spoke volumes about what she knew. Her expectation and amusement gave him the last shred of confidence he needed.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of the continued arguments being thrown at he and Ia. Before he could lose his nerve, he raised the pistol and aimed it one-handed at Ia's leg. He saw some sort of movement behind her in his peripheral vision but he spared it no attention as he quickly pulled the trigger.

The loud _crack_ of the p-gun reverberated around the empty hangar and was immediately followed by the clear sound of struck crystal. A perfect, almost musical note silenced all utterances of horror before most of them could even become sound waves.

Ferrar stared along with everyone else at the blade of Ia's sword as it hung just inches in front of where Ferrar had aimed. Then the entire group's eyes looked past her at the paper target suspended in the air, a single hole punched straight through the bull's eye.

Everyone watched as she moved the blade back to rest point down in front of her. "Again," She said.

Ferrar was less than enthusiastic about following that order but he knew better than to back out of this particular game of chicken. He aimed at her other leg, slightly faster this time, and pulled the trigger.

Once again the loud crack of the firearm was followed almost imperceptibly later by the clear ringing of flawless crystal. Again a target hung suspended in the air, a hole in the bull's eye. This paper target rose along with the first to hover high above Ia's head. This time, everyone watched as her sword jumped backward in her hand, too fast to be of her own volition.

"Again," she said. "Faster."

Ferrar complied, firing three shots a second apart, each aimed at slightly different parts of her body. His confidence in her abilities growing with each shot blocked, he began firing at more essential body parts. Again, Ia demonstrated a level of precision that Ferrar could never in a million years have imagined was possible.

"Again," Ia said implacably. "Fire until you are out of cartridges, reload, and keep firing."

Ferrar did as he was ordered, losing all hesitation somewhere after the last shot in the first clip. He reloaded, and fired at Ia in increasingly wide angles, aiming first at her shin and then her shoulder, each time attempting to truly test what she was capable of.

Somewhere along the way he had lost all inhibitions and misgivings about what it was he was doing. He'd trusted her before but this was different; this was faith. He'd seen her do some extraordinary things while she was serving in his Company so he had already known that she was incredible.

Ferrar's slowly accelerating fire rate was something else entirely. He had no reason to believe she could block his next shot when he aimed at opposite parts of her body but he did anyway.

This faith lasted right up until he fired two shots at an impossible angle for her to achieve with her arm within milliseconds of each other. He knew the moment he pulled the trigger the second time that he had gone too far. He was absolutely certain that he'd hit her square in the left lung.

But instead of seeing her doubled over in pain after getting over the shock of his own actions, he saw her sword hovering in place, right across both points where the bullets would have punctured.

Two more targets rose to join the rest above Ia's head. Organized from first to last, top to bottom, left to right in a neat, uniform grid pattern the punctures were easy to see against the lights illuminating the bay.

While most of the early ones were near perfect hits, the spread of punctures slowly widened as the pattern continued until the last two targets had been punctured in the middle-most of the concentric circles.

In a small part of his mind, somewhere behind his unrestrained awe, he recognized that it was a remarkably effective demonstration. Between the distinctive sound of crystal informing the men and women around him of contact with Ia's thin sword and the targets hanging perfectly still in the air above them all, Ferrar had to acknowledge that it did an excellent job of displaying Ia's capabilities.

Ferrar quickly became conscious of the silent audience around him. He saw a mix of awe and fear on Benny's face. Looking around, he saw mostly disbelief on the servicemeioa around him.

Finally, someone broke the silence. "The hell?" Engles asked quietly.

A brief moment of silent agreement followed.

"Most of the galaxy will look back on the things the people on this ship will accomplish without the slightest understanding of what it really took to achieve them," Ia said, ignoring Engles' comment. "But that won't work with you because you'll be the ones doing them.

"There will be moments when I will ask you to do things that to anyone who doesn't understand what I'm capable of would seem suicidal. Yet you'll have to do them without hesitation and trust that I know what I'm doing," she continued. "Like Major Ferrar here you'll need to do things that make no sense to you and seem completely irrational. And, like him, you'll need to do them to achieve something important."

Cmd. Engles again couldn't help himself. "What sorts of things are you talking about?" he asked skeptically.

Ia looked him square in the eye before she said, "At one point in the not so distant future, I will order a dozen of you to jump off a cliff."

"You can't be serious!" Engles cried. Similar cries of disbelief echoed from the arrayed personnel. "You honestly expect me to jump off a cliff for you?! Why would I do that? Are you going to try and convince me I'm a threat to the mission?"

Ferrar was probably the only one that noticed the subtle stiffening of Ia's features at that. Before he could even begin to guess what that meant, she replied, "No Engles. By the time that happens, you'll trust me enough to jump on your own."

Ferrar couldn't hold back his tongue any longer. "Engles, you really have no concept of what she's capable of. I watched on satellite recordings as she surfed the floodwave of a broken dam. I was there when she earned her Field Commission. She's opened the doors of airtight complexes with nothing but bandage tape on. She's done things most of you could never dream of doing.

"Now you've never served with her," he continued, glancing at Spyder and Harkins, "The three of us have. Personally, if she told me to jump off a cliff, I'd know two things immediately: she had a plan, and she had no intention of letting me die."

A new voice spoke up at that, "I'm not sure about jumping off a cliff," the woman said, "But Ia saved our lives a dozen times on the Blockade and pulled us out of some really impossible situations.

"I'm willing to give her a chance," the woman said as she pushed through the crowd.

"Hello Dixon," Ia said as the other woman reached the front of the group. "How was the leg regrowth?"

"Terrible. Took forever and itched like a _shakking _nightmare," she replied.

"I can imagine," Ia replied wryly.

"How many of these people have served with you before?" Engles asked incredulously. Ferrar could tell he was a little thrown off by their defense of Ia.

"Just five you," Ia replied. "These four and Benny. The point of this exercise was to demonstrate some of what I'm capable of to prime you for the things you'll see and participate in during the months to come. I don't expect you to jump out an airlock in the next five minutes Engles. That would be slightly ambitious." A wry smirk tugged firmly at her mouth at this.

"When I ask you to do the insane, you'll believe in me enough to do so on your own. When I ask you to do things no sane person would normally do, you'll do it because you'll trust my abilities enough to do so; trust that I'll earn in the fullness of Time," She concluded.

"Until then, this will have to get my foot in the door, and it's about time for your training to start," she said cryptically. "Store your things in the crew quarters behind me and wait for further instructions," she said, raising her voice so that everyone would hear. "In about half an hour you'll all need to report to the various parts of the ship you're least familiar with to be trained by your fellow personnel."

"Dismissed," she said, then promptly turned on her heel and strode confidently toward the nearest exit. For a moment, Ferrar contemplated letting her go. But his curiosity got the better of him and he followed her across the bay.

He caught up with her just as he reached the doorway. The sign next to it gave him no clues about her final destination but he didn't really need to know.

They walked in silence for several minutes, side by side navigating the twisting corridors of the unfinished ship. Though most of the areas they passed were mostly completed, there were occasionally the odd light fixture that hadn't been bolted in place and wiring that hung loose out of open access panels.

They passed several uncovered maintenance hallways, red light spilling out into the corridor through the small openings.

Finally, as Ferrar noticed the more finished state of the corridor they entered and the signs indicating the proximity of the bridge, he knew they would have enough privacy for him to ask his question.

"I felt you nudge my hand on those last two shots," he began. "You aren't as good as you let on are you?" He stared pointedly at her, waiting for her response.

"I'm better," she replied, throwing him off. "But sometimes the probabilities don't look good enough for me. Sometimes they need a little push to work out just right."

Ia reached into her pocket and removed a small vial. Quickly uncapping it, she let it hang at her side before continuing, "Even then, I can't account for everything. I'm only one woman; I can't be in a fraction of the places I need to be to align things perfectly. Sometimes things move too fast; I can only do the best that I can."

Ferrar focused on her face as she spoke. As a result he missed what she did next; right up until she raised the hand with the vial up to eye level.

She had replaced the cap and the previously empty container was now full of small metallic shards covered in what looked a hell of a lot like blood. It took a moment for Ferrar to understand.

He should have known. Any projectile moving at speed will shatter upon impact with an unforgiving surface and the bullets he'd fired at Ia were no exception. She may have deflected the majority of each bullet's mass into the targets, but it was inevitable that pieces would get through.

He stared at it horror. He couldn't even form a proper response for what he'd done and could think of no way to apologize. It had been her idea, but it was his fault for pulling the trigger.

Then he looked into her eyes. They weren't accusatory or angry; they didn't stare back at him promising retribution. There was sympathy there.

At that moment, in a rapid fire series of flashes, he understood. In the two years she'd served with him, she'd sustained several injuries, many of them severe. In that time, she'd taken laser cannon rounds to the shoulder, broken arms while flying through the air, and been stabbed by a man hopped up on poppers, among many others.

He'd never stopped to think through the implications of a precog suffering injuries like those. Granted at the time he'd had no idea how powerful a precog she really was, but now there was an entirely new context to each of those serious injuries.

"You knew you'd get hit," he said, no small amount of awe in his voice, "You knew you'd get hit and yet you ordered me to shoot you!"

"Yes Ferrar," she replied. "Because sometimes, you need to put your body on the line to complete an objective. Sometimes it's not as easy as avoiding injury. Sometimes I need to actively seek one out to nudge things into the right path. Because sometimes the probabilities just aren't good enough otherwise."

"That's… insane," he muttered.

"Only when you don't know the full consequences," she responded calmly. "If taking a laser shot to the gut will ensure someone else avoids a deadly injury, thereby sabotaging the future, then I _have _to be willing to take that shot to the gut.

"When you really get right down to it it's not that much different than what any soldier does when they put their bodies between an enemy and a civilian to achieve a mission objective," she continued. "The only real difference is that I see it coming."

Ferrar couldn't immediately think of a response to that. They walked on in silence for several minutes until they passed through an open hatchway onto what Ferrar concluded was the bridge.

None of the chairs save one had been installed and none of the consoles had been wired. Blank transparent screens jutted out of what would eventually become the various stations.

Ferrar had had very little training in the operation and function of a Navy bridge so he couldn't tell what most of the various consoles would later become. The only obvious station was the Captain's, which Ia eased herself into.

For a brief moment, Ferrar saw a small grimace on her face. Then it was gone, replace by her typical expression.

He had always assumed her face was simply that of a hardened soldier, trained by experience to avoid expressing too much emotion. But looking at her then he realized that wasn't quite the case.

The look she bore wasn't just one of experience; it was a guarded look; one that hid knowledge that she refused to share. When she served with him she was hiding her precognitive abilities and, once he figured out that particular secret, it was hiding all her other abilities.

He realized then that as much as he thought he understood her, there were secrets she knew that he couldn't even dream of. The woman he saw was merely the outer shell of the woman she was.

"You're staring Ferrar," Ia said, another one of her wry smiles tweaking the edge of her mouth.

He was. Because he trusted the woman sitting in a Captain's chair on a classified ship that had, in a scant five years of military service, gotten the ear of the Command Staff itself and yet he knew next to nothing about her.

"Ia, you once told me if I revealed your psychic abilities I would cause the deaths of an astronomically large number of people," he began. He watched for any change in her features. It was incredibly unnerving trying to have a conversation with a precog; you could never tell whether they already knew what you were going to say.

"At the time I brushed it off as an exaggeration. A large number tends to seem astronomical until you have some perspective," he said. "But you knew there would be a war with the Salik didn't you? You knew far enough ahead to plan how to take out their high command. We are on the cusp of a potentially devastating war, and you knew it was going to happen."

"I did," she replied. She said nothing else, apparently letting Ferrar continue.

"But I get the sense that you weren't talking about just the Salik War," continued, ignoring the obvious implications of her terseness. A conclusion was forming in his mind. "I get the sense that you have a much larger plan in place; something that reaches much farther than that."

Ia looked stoically back at him. The wry smirk was gone and her face was once again guarded. Ferrar couldn't glean any information from it. The skill at which she hid what she was thinking and feeling was starting to matter to him.

"So given what appears to be at stake here, I have to wonder," he continued, "what you're really doing here. You're a second generation colonist from a heavy world on the very edge of Alliance space. By all rights, you have no reason to be here. Any normal colonist in your position would have deemed the needs of their fellows more important than the protection of a government they owed no real allegiance to.

"Not unless you knew this war was going to happen, and felt you had something to contribute," he said, looking hard for any reaction. "Not unless you felt you had to leave the safety of your homeworld."

Ia looked back at him. There was no surprise and no worry on her face. As he had suspected, she knew this conversation would happen. She was silent for a full minute as she stared back at his skeptical face.

"You're right Ferrar, I'm not a typical soldier," she began. "I didn't choose this life for the normal reasons. I don't fall into the normal categories." She paused and glanced around the bridge, finally resting her gaze on Ferrar's face.

"I gave up everything I ever wanted to join the military and do things I never dreamed of," she continued. She looked hard into Ferrar's eyes as she spoke. "I knew that there were things that needed to be done that only I could do. Things that needed to be set in motion that only I could forsee."

She rested further into the captain's chair. For the first time in Ferrar's memory she showed a true emotion, "Would you believe that when I was growing up, I wanted to be a professional singer?" She paused, a very weary sadness written clearly on her face. "I was innocent once. I had innocent goals and was well on my way to achieving them.

"I had unstained hands and wanted for all the world for them to stay that way…" her voice trailed off as she looked idly around the bridge.

He didn't know how to respond to that. This was Bloody Mary; the soldier that had returned from her first combat drenched in enemy blood and guts, the soldier that had built a strong and lasting reputation on bloodshed and death.

She was the harbinger of death for every battlefield she ever served on. To think she could possibly have been so naïve and innocent was incomprehensible to Ferrar.

"When I turned fifteen, I saw things about Time that changed everything," she continued. Her face hardened and once again became her typical mask of impassivity. "If I was to ever be able to live with myself, I needed to give up everything I ever cared about, everything I ever wanted, and everything I had ever strived to achieve and join the military. I had to travel thousands of light years from home to kill creatures I had never met. I had to earn a reputation synonymous with bloodshed.

"If I didn't, not only would I be driven mad by a never-ending series of visions of the lives my selfishness had cost but the galaxy itself would be a casualty," she said. "I refused to let that happen. So here I am, killing criminals and warmongers in droves and receiving bullet wounds to prove a point."

Ferrar didn't know what to say. The things she had just revealed… They were things he knew in his heart were secrets she'd never shared willingly. She was so guarded against revealing herself to the people around her that Ferrar knew she'd never told anyone the extent of her sacrifice.

Which begged the question.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.

"Because convincing these men and women to follow me into hell itself would be impossible without backup," she replied. "Because I need you to understand some of what I've given up to be here. Because without perspective, none of you can fully trust me.

"And because my XO needs to be on the same page as me, or this whole operation will come crashing down," she said, her smirk once again returning to her face. "Which would be worse than you know." And with that, the smirk disappeared.

Ferrar wasn't sure then if he did truly understand her. He had no idea then what sorts of visions could drive a girl like the one she claimed to have been to choose the life she had.

How innocent he truly was.

/AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Alright, so I don't really plan for this to be some great, arcing plotline-based fan fiction like the other ones on my shared profile. Then again, anyone reading this probably doesn't even know about those other stories so the distinction is probably moot anyway.

Suffice it to say I have no real plans for this story. It's not supposed to have its own plot or anything like that, I was just trying to write down what I had in my head as sort of practice and exorcism rolled into one.

I do have one more story I want to tell in this universe that I literally came up with a couple of days ago so I'll probably tack it onto this as a second chapter.

Feel free to review this if you read it because I do appreciate the appreciation and critique.

Other than that I hope you enjoyed it and, if you played the Mass Effect trilogy, feel free to read my other stories.

If it isn't an ME story, I didn't write it, my sister did. I sort of stole her account here because I was too lazy to create my own.


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